How The Greats Pursue Happiness | Jeffrey Rosen

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Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:06Ryan Holiday?

  Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast, where each weekday, we bring you a meditation inspired by the ancient Stoics, a short passage of ancient wisdom designed to help you find strength and insight here in everyday life. And on Wednesdays, we talk to some of our fellow students of ancient philosophy, well-known and obscure, fascinating and powerful. With them, we discuss the strategies and habits that have helped them become who they are, and also to find peace and wisdom in their actual lives. But first, we've got a quick message from one of our sponsors.

• 0:55Ryan Holiday?

  Hey, it's Ryan. Welcome to another episode of the Daily Stoic Podcast. I'm feeling awesome, very relaxed, because I just got out of Barton Springs. Well, I had to drive an hour back in traffic. That wasn't my favorite part, but I think Barton Springs is one of the wonders of the world, one of my absolute favorite pools, places to swim in all of America. I would say, you know, actually, all of the world, the only thing I look forward to more than swimming in Barton Springs, which I can do at any time, is the Blue Hole in New Mexico, one of my absolute favorites, and then the rock pools on Bondi Beach in Australia,

• 1:37Ryan Holiday?

  which I'm going to be swimming in for a good chunk of July, because I've got some talks there. You can grab tickets. You can come see me. I'm in Sydney, I think, on the 30th, and Melbourne on the 30th of July, 1st of August, something like that. Don't hold me to that. I mean, grab tickets at ryanholiday.net/australia. Anyways, it was a good swim, and I had a good time. And now I'm back recording in the closet, my house, to tell you about today's guest. You might have noticed in my books, I'm a big lover of history, particularly American history, the American Revolution. People ask if the Stoics are...

• 2:25Ryan Holiday?

  Just resigned. Do the Stoics just accept things as they are? The American Revolution being a quintessential example of this not being the case. Because Washington and Jefferson and Adams and Hamilton and all the major figures of the American Revolution, Franklin had not just a sort of passing familiarity with the Stoics, but had explicitly read them. And it's disappointed me that this connection isn't made enough and talked about enough. Because I think it's so important. I loved Tom Ricks' book First Principles, which we carry at the Painted Porch. I've had him on the podcast twice. He talked about, you know, what were, what was the philosophical underpinnings of the American Revolution? What were the founders reading and talking about?

• 3:08Ryan Holiday?

  And it's a great book, but he doesn't explicitly talk about Stoicism really at all. I thought that was, I was disappointed when I was hoping someone would home in on just that. So when I saw Jeffrey Rosen's new book, I was like, finally. It's called The Pursuit of Happiness: How Classical Writers on Virtue Inspired the Lives of the Founders and Defined America. And when he's talking about classical writers on virtue, he's largely talking about the Stoics. In fact, he's almost exclusively talking about the Stoics, and it's a fascinating book. I was really excited to see it. He talks about Franklin and Washington and Adams and Jefferson and Madison, Hamilton, and what the pursuit of happiness meant to them, and specifically what the Stoics

• 3:52Ryan Holiday?

  taught them about this. It's a super important book. I loved talking to him about it. We're carrying it the porch because it's a really lovely book. And I'm so excited that he came on. He is a professor of law at George Washington University. He's been a legal affairs commentator for The New Republic and The Atlantic. He was a staff writer for The New Yorker and frequently contributes to The New York Times Magazine. And he is currently the president and CEO of the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia. So he's got a legal background, and then he just rediscover's.

• 4:27Ryan Holiday?

  During the pandemic, what the Stoics, what and how the Stoics influenced the founding of America, were they perfect human beings? No. Were they perfect Stoics? No. Were the Stoics themselves 2,000 years earlier, perfect? No. But it was a leap forward. And I think it's, it is, to me, the most essential argument in the case against Stoicism as being a passive, disengaged philosophy, which of course, the Stoics weren't in ancient Rome, and they weren't in the founding of America, building a new nation from nothing. And then they're not today. The Justice Book, that I'm doing, The Right Thing Right Now, which is about character and good values and good deeds, is influenced by the same things that Rosen

• 5:11Ryan Holiday?

  is talking about in this book. You can preorder that at DailyStoic.com/justice. I'm talking about how a Stoic gets involved, how we make a difference, how we solve hard problems. And it's a lovely, important thread that I think we all need to be talking about. Enjoy this interview with Jeffrey Rosen. Check out The Pursuit of Happiness: How Classical Writers on Virtue Inspired the Lives of the Founders in Defined America. And then hopefully, check out Right Thing Right Now. And if you haven't read Tom Ricks's book, check that out as well. You can follow him @RosenJeffrey on Twitter and check out the book. I'll link to it in today's show notes. Enjoy.

• 5:55Ryan Holiday?

  So there's this stereotype of the Stoics being apathetic, being resigned, being sort of unemotional, accepting that the world is flawed and broken and unchangeable. This is how I sort of make up that that stereotype goes. But I've always felt the ultimate contradiction of that idea was the group of men and women steeped in Stoicism.

• 6:23Ryan Holiday?

  Right around the end of the 18th century here in America.

• 6:27Speaker 01

  Absolutely. It is striking how central the idea of self-improvement, character improvement, self-mastery, and always striving for moral perfection was to the American founding. Far from being resigned or apathetic or willing to accept the inevitable, these were among the most striving and forward-thinking men and women imaginable. And what's so significant is that that idea, which is really the American idea of self-reliance, self-improvement, and character improvement persisted for much of American history.

• 7:08Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, because there is, and there is an element of Stoicism that basically says, "Focus on what's in your control, and by the way, most of what's happening in the world is not in your control." And there was a theme in the Stoic history, particularly after the fall of the Republic, where they have to accept a very imperfect political system and the injustices therein. But I think what you see in the founding generation of Stoics, you know, Washington and Jefferson and Adams and Franklin, is that it's not incompatible that you can be a Stoic and participate in political action, not just

• 7:52Ryan Holiday?

  maintenance political action, but you can invent a whole new way of governance. You can literally invent a new world.

• 8:01Speaker 01

  Absolutely. The reason that the founding generation wanted to master their thoughts and focus on things that were in their control was so they could perfect themselves to serve others and to create a more perfect union. And in that sense, there was a deep connection between the Enlightenment ideals of living according to reason, even if that meant remaking the world and revolution, when governments failed to respect liberty and reason, and also focusing on the only thing we can control, which is our own thoughts and actions. It's really striking to see that Enlightenment Stoic synthesis. And of course, what's so significant is it's not just...

• 8:45Speaker 01

  One tradition in the Enlightenment, when I looked at the sources on Jefferson's reading list for his understanding of the pursuit of happiness, all of them cited back to the ancient Stoics. It was so significant that the Christian sources Woollettson and Tillettson and these thinkers who tried to reconcile Christianity with rationalism, the Whig republican sources Al-Junon, Sidney and Cato's letters, Blackstone's commentaries, and civic republican thinkers, all have as their footnote, often Cicero, and in particular, Cicero's Tusculian disputations. It's so significant that John Locke says if they're just two books that anyone should read to be educated, they're the Bible and Cicero,

• 9:29Speaker 01

  and David Hume cites Cicero and so forth. So, all of these Enlightenment thinkers trying to reconcile faith with reason and reason with liberty, end up going back to the Stoics.

• 9:39Ryan Holiday?

  Well, that's because that's what Cicero was doing, right? I think we have this perception today of Cicero being this Roman politician, which of course he was. But more than a politician, he was a scholar of ancient history. That's something I've been thinking about lately that like, even like, Stoicism was ancient to the ancient Stoics, right? Like, 800 or so years elapsed between, 500 or so years elapsed between Zeno and Marcus Aurelius, Caesar, sorry, Cicero is looking back at Zeno and Cleanthes and these earlier Stoics as having been like, the good old days, right? And so, so when we read, when we think of

• 10:24Ryan Holiday?

  Cicero as this political actor, we're not giving him credit as the historian he was and the popularizer he was of these ancient Stoic ideas. So even when people say, oh, the, you know, the founders were steeped in Stoicism and thinkers like Cicero, you're basically saying they were steeped in Stoicism.

• 10:42Speaker 01

  Absolutely right. And as you say, Cicero was the great synthesizer, the skeptic who's going back to ancient history and Applying its lessons to the present. And so often, we think about the political side of Cicero and on duties and his deep influence on how to construct governments. But what's also so striking is the Tusculian disputations on grief and his deep influence on how to be a good person. And that connection between personal self-government and political self-government, which is very much in Cicero, was one that the founders, in particular Madison, applied to the modern

• 11:25Speaker 01

  science of government in an extraordinarily creative way. So in some ways, they're performing the same task that he did in trying to reflect about the application of ancient Stoic moral philosophy on politics. And although they're designing constitutions in light of this new science of government, and in particular that of public opinion, they, like Cicero, are seeing a deep connection between the need to master our own thoughts and emotions and the ability to govern ourselves in a republic.

• 11:54Ryan Holiday?

  Well, it's a really timeless thing. I think, I loved the book, by the way, I thought it was fascinating. If you think about what you were doing, the world feels like it's falling apart, we're in the middle of a plague, and you sit down and you read these ancient thinkers to help explain the moment that we're in. Obviously, that's what Cicero is doing, you know, after the loss of his daughter or in exile. This is what Seneca is doing when he's writing his, writing much of his best writing, he's doing that from exile, or he's doing it because Nero is insane and it feels like the world is falling apart. I think of Marcus Aurelius, we don't think of Meditations as being a plague book, but

• 12:38Ryan Holiday?

  it was written during the Antonine Plague. So there is this sort of fundamentally human Tradition of, I don't understand what's happening around me right now. What did people from generations past go through? And what were they thinking about? And how can that help me now in the moment that I am in?

• 13:00Speaker 01

  Well, first of all, I'm incredibly honored by your noting the connection between my COVID era reading and all of those great thinkers during their plagues, trying to focus on the only thing they could control, which is their own thoughts and emotions. My project, just to share, was a series of unexpected synchronicities. I was just so struck to learn that both Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson had cited Cicero's Tusculian Disputations in their effort to explain their list of 12 or 13 virtues about how to be a good person. And then I just thought, I've got to read Cicero because he was so important to the founders. What else to read? And then I saw that amazing reading list that Thomas Jefferson shared with kids who

• 13:44Speaker 01

  were going to law school and people who wanted to know how to be educated. And it's the section that Jefferson sometimes called natural religion and sometimes ethics that begins with the Tusculian Disputations and then includes Seneca and Aurelius and Epictetus and as well as Enlightenment philosophers. And I was just so struck that this is a gap in my education. I've had this wonderful liberal arts education with studying history and political philosophy and literature and law, but I just missed these ancient philosophers. So that was what led me to read them during COVID. It was so empowering and like many of your listeners, I found that it just changed my life.

• 14:22Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, what is that? I read Cicero in college and Marcus Aurelius in college and Epictetus in college. And by that, I mean, I was in college when I read them, but they were not assigned readings, right? There's sort of these things that are on the periphery, like you get assigned philosophical texts or political science, or you read about the history of the American founding.

• 14:46Ryan Holiday?

  But it's like, it's like there's this secret club right over here that you don't know about. That's actually one of the longest standing, oldest clubs there is, that's, that's so incredibly practical and exciting and inspiring. And I would say most of all accessible and, and, and like you don't need a college class to teach it. And, and, and it just, yeah, it's this life changing, eye opening thing that it seems sad that it only happens by accident for a small subset of the population.

• 15:20Speaker 01

  You put it so well, a secret club that's accessible and practical. And I remember in college, just yearning for this kind of guidance. And you know, I'm studying literature and history and political philosophy with great teachers, but yearning for an answer to the question of how to lead a good life by reason and reflection, rather than blind faith or obedience to religious authority. And I didn't realize, because all these great books just fell out of the core curriculum, is that it was hiding in plain sight. And it was so striking to learn that these books were at the core of not only the college curriculum, and even the law school curriculum in the 19th century, but also middle and high school. And so inspiring to find people

• 16:04Speaker 01

  like Frederick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln, getting excerpts from the Stoics in popular readers, like the McGuffey reader and the Columbian orator, and seeing that persist all the way up to the 1950s or so, when it just fell out of the curriculum. So what's, what's, what's similarly striking about what you say is that although this is a secret club today, it was absolutely at the core of what it meant to be an educated person for most of American history.

• 16:28Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, like Washington is probably the only founder that does not read the Stoics in Greek or Latin or French, right? Like, he would have been considered the Philistine for having only read them in his native tongue, you know, these thousands of year old texts of a very different world. Like, they, they didn't just know them, but they'd read them in multiple languages from an early age and, and were, yeah. We're just so steeped in them. I always point out to people like, I go, okay, you've heard of the Federalist Papers, right? And they go, yeah. And then I go, you know how none of them signed their real names? They all use these fake names? They go, yeah. And I go,

• 17:08Ryan Holiday?

  everyone else knew who those names were. Those weren't just funny, made up pseudonyms. Those were references to the classical world. That it would be like me, you know, me calling myself like Don Corleone or something in a fake letter. It's like, it's a reference to the culture that was so prevalent, at least amongst the people that they were trying to speak to, that everyone got what you were alluding to, or the theme you were evoking.

• 17:38Speaker 01

  Absolutely. Everyone got it. And it was just central to their moral universe, starting from when they were kids. It's incredibly significant that Thomas Jefferson's dad dies when he's 14. And what does he do? He turns to Cicero to console him, to Cicero's on grief, a manual on grief for his key understanding of the pursuit of happiness. John Adams gets it in college where it's part of the core curriculum, Madison and Hamilton also. And then you have the next generation often getting it from these popular readers. And they're either reading it in the original, as you say, and then they're also getting the citations to the classics from their,

• 18:22Speaker 01

  from their religious upbringing and from their reading in 18th century political philosophy. This central antithesis between reason and passion and the imperative to use your powers of reason to master or moderate your unreasonable passions and emotions, which of course goes back to Pythagoras and is glossed by Plato and appears at the core of ancient moral philosophy, is basically the center of their moral universe. They're getting it from their parents, from their reading, from their teachers, from their preachers. And it just pervades everything they think about how to be a good person.

• 18:57Ryan Holiday?

  Well, one of the things you you realize when you read the Stoics is how accessible and practical they are. And yet, there is this sense that, I don't know, that kids aren't ready for it. I hear all the time, people go, I want to introduce my kids to Stoicism. You know, are there any books about it? And I go, yeah, the Stoics, right? But Washington is introduced to the Stoics in kind of a reader, like you're talking about, a sort of a compilation book, when he's like 16 years old. For generations, you would have been memorizing the epigrams of Seneca in Latin, in your Latin classes. And so I think there's also this sense, maybe that earlier generations weren't babied when it came to these big ideas. So you would be introduced to the philosophy, you were also introduced

• 19:42Ryan Holiday?

  to, you know, Plutarch and these other thinkers, who you're starting to understand the names and the places and the big events. And you kind of just, you fall down this rabbit hole. And so maybe that's what it was, too. They weren't reading their kids like children's books about monkeys or pizza or whatever. They were going straight to the good stuff.

• 20:04Speaker 01

  Exactly. They weren't babied, and they were going straight to the good stuff. And it just changed their lives. Hamilton takes his copy of Plutarch's Lives to the battlefield, and he's copying out the excerpts, and he loves the nude parades and lysergists. And, you know, he's just connecting to it in the most direct way. This tradition of taking notes, commonplace books, Jefferson going through the books and copying out relevant excerpts, Washington copying out more popular poems from the Gentleman's Quarterly about happiness being virtue. And then, I mean, if you need any more inspiring evidence of the power of the primary text to inspire, the great Phyllis Wheatley, enslaved, brought

• 20:48Speaker 01

  over in shackles from Africa, is given a classical education in the schoolroom with her master and mistress's kids. And this inspires her to be the greatest poet of her age and write poems about virtue and self mastery. Mercy Otis Warren has the same experience. Abigail Adams, who doesn't have the benefit of a Harvard education, like the boys in the family, is similarly inspired. It just shows that you do not have to dilute this stuff, or baby people, give them access to the primary text, and it will change their world.

• 21:24Ryan Holiday?

  So what is it about Plutarch? Because I feel like if the Stoics are underrated and under-read these days, then Plutarch is like a whole other level because as not being, it's like he personally offends this generation of historians with his style and his approach. So he's sort of totally forgotten. And yet, basically up until, I don't know, maybe the 1950s, if you were an ambitious, promising, young person in essentially any domain from politics to the military to business, you not only read Plutarch, but you loved Plutarch, and you knew it backwards and forwards.

• 22:06Speaker 01

  Absolutely. Plutarch is so galvanizing because the way to learn about history is through biography. And these inspiring stories offered as moral narratives contrasting a great Greek and Roman philosopher or military leader inspired people like Alexander Hamilton to change the world. And today, of course, people still respond to stories and biography. But the history profession, as you say, has found that unfashionable. And that idea of narrative biography offered as moral inspiration has fallen by the wayside. The great Dryden

• 22:51Speaker 01

  translation of Plutarch, which you can get on Delphi editions, sort of out of print editions for $1.99, wasn't available for, even when I was a kid, the edition that my parents had, it was the Plough and Dryden translation, long and forbidding. I tried it as a kid and found it, I gave up because it was so long. But I think just having the, it's part of losing patience with deep reading, just having the kind of determination to plow in and give yourself over to the stories is incredibly rewarding, and it's inspired people for many generations.

• 23:35Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, it's like today... A historian wants you to believe that to understand some figure, you have to read a 900-page biography about them, filled with endless facts and figures and quotations, largely, I would say, negative, right? We have to show how flawed and awful or hypocritical the person is. And so when you read Plutarch and it's like, okay, this is a 30-page essay, essentially, a biographical essay of this person, that some of the figures, some of the facts, some of the stories demonstrably untrue or incredibly implausible. And yet, Plutarch would say, that's not what I'm trying to do. He's like, I'm trying to capture the essence

• 24:17Ryan Holiday?

  of what made this person great or tragic, right? Flawed or amazing? And you get more from these short essays than you do from, you know, hours and hours of reading these enormous biographies about these. It's really like, it's a testament to what an incredible writer and thinker and philosopher he was, that you can get more with so much less.

• 24:47Speaker 01

  It really is. And a testament to the power of history and biography to teach us how to live. Homer says, "The purpose of art is to instruct and delight." And the great historians adopted that philosophy. And that's the way kids and young people and adults throughout all of history have learned about how to live by reading these great lives, which include flaws, but also inspiration. For me, it's so satisfying to find readers responding to the portraits of the founders I'm offering in this Pursuit of Happiness book, because they really do inspire us about how to live. And with their incredibly disciplined reading and writing, the schedules they set for themselves,

• 25:32Speaker 01

  even acknowledging all of their great flaws, they provide us for inspiration about how to live.

• 25:39Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, I was just reading about Truman and Truman basically begs his parents to send away for an edition of Plutarch. He saves all, he says, he saves his pennies for him. He gets this edition of Plutarch, which he makes his father read to him every night. And he reflects, you know, when he's president, he said, "Every time in my life I've had a political problem, I've gone back and read Plutarch, and nine times out of 10, the solution was there." Because basically, people don't change.

• 26:08Speaker 01

  That is so inspiring about Truman. And he, as the McCullough biography shows, there's something so inspiring and so American about his deep, disciplined, daily reading and his determination to teach himself by reading the primary text. He goes to sleep with the reading lamp on. Sometimes it burns a hole in his pillow because he's so determined to learn from history. He turns to history in dropping the bomb and underlines significant passages to guide him. And that vision of the self-taught classicist who's learning from history is so much in the tradition of Abe Lincoln, of Frederick Douglass, of

• 26:53Speaker 01

  our greatest presidents. And it's just a testament to the power of these amazing books to inspire our greatest leaders.

• 27:00Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, he said, Truman said, "The only thing new in the world is the history you do not yet know."

• 27:06Speaker 01

  Yes, so true. And he was so right about that. And, and just the stack of books that he had in the White House and when he retired as well and went back to independence. I, I really struck by the fact that during the founding era and throughout history, the greatest leaders have been the greatest readers. And they, and they kept up that reading that they started as kids. Some had fancy educations, others taught themselves. But they're just voraciously turning to history to learn from its mistakes and avoid them in the present until they're old.

• 27:52Ryan Holiday?

  I was thinking about how the only thing new in the world is the history you do not yet know. And, you know, we have this, this play, Hamilton, that blows up a couple years ago. It reintroduces everyone to this old, dead white guy that we've all forgotten. And it becomes part of our parlance. It changes things in the present, right? And I think about the analog there, that during the founding, the Hamilton of its day is a play about Cato, which was unbelievably popular. Everyone knew it. And it not just influences the present,

• 28:30Ryan Holiday?

  you could argue that the founding of America is a bunch of history nerds play acting out their favorite scenes from this play about a dead Roman.

• 28:43Speaker 01

  What a great point. There's so, as you say, it was, it was Washington's favorite play. He wants it read to the troops. At Newburgh, when they're rebelling, he mounts the special stage called the Temple of Virtue and quotes from the play and insists that the calm, the calming effects of mild philosophy will prevent the troops from following their passions and rebelling. And there's no better example of the didactic purposes of history through drama than Cato in particular, which just absolutely sparked the revolution.

• 29:23Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah. And when you read the ancient Stoics, one of the, if you really get into it, one of the things it forces you to do is go back and read Euripides and Aeschylus and Sophocles, because they were doing the same thing. There's these references to these plays in the Stoics that, you know, I mean, there's a line from Euripides in Marcus Aurelius, "to a play we no longer have." Like, they were such big fans of these dramatic playwrights that, that in some cases, it's our, it's our only... It's our only recording of it. I think it was Chrysippus, one of the early Stoics. He produces this work. It might have been Cleanthes. He produces this work.

• 30:05Ryan Holiday?

  And his friends joked that you could call it Cleanthes or Chrysippus's Medea, because he quoted word for word throughout the essay, almost every line from the entire play. Right? So it's this tradition of philosophers and politicians also drawing from the theater, from popular culture that continues on to this day.

• 30:33Speaker 01

  It's so true. It does continue to this day. And it's really striking how directly politicians throughout American history quoted the ancients. I think of Robert Kennedy, who read Barbara Tuchman and would quote, of course, Aeschylus and Euripides. You look at the 19th century debates over the great constitutional issues, and they're so learned. You have Webster and Calhoun quoting references from Banquo's Ghost, as well as from the classics, because it's part of their common parlance. They're doing so without embarrassment. They're not trying to dumb it down and seem like they're of the people, but it's not pretentious either. It's just

• 31:17Speaker 01

  part of the common parlance that really defined political debate for so much of our history.

• 31:23Ryan Holiday?

  So you quote this amazing reading list from Jefferson, and two things jumped out at me about it. One, I've always thought it interesting that the founding generation, they did seem to love the Stoics, but Marcus Aurelius seemed to be the one that appeared the least. He does make an appearance on Jefferson's list, but I think it was Seneca that's on Jefferson's nightstand when he dies, not Marcus Aurelius. Is there a reason you think that maybe they looked, if not askance, but somewhat less favorably on Marcus? They went back more to the republican Stoics? I guess Seneca is not one, so that doesn't make sense, but I'm just curious what you thought.

• 32:05Speaker 01

  No, I'd love your thoughts. I guess Quincy Adams invokes Aurelius the most directly as a bomb in times of adversity as opposed to plenty, but it's, I don't know, was he too accessible? Or was he out of fashion then? I don't have the answer.

• 32:29Ryan Holiday?

  I don't either. I wonder if maybe they just had that sort of aversion to kings, you know? And so the philosopher king, as philosophical as he was, is just an inconvenient figure to the people that just dethroned their king and set up a new form of government.

• 32:51Speaker 01

  Very interesting. And maybe they didn't need him as a kind of accessible entry point into Stoicism because they were so steeped in all the other aspects of it.

• 33:02Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, I don't know. I've just always, you know, you see Epictetus appear quite a bit, you see Seneca appear quite a bit, but the one they love above all others, ironically, is the one who didn't write anything down. It's all Cato, who, Cato is their Stoic hero and their Stoic model.

• 33:20Speaker 01

  Because, of course, he's such a Republican hero and because of the play, is such a model for how to fight power and defend liberty.

• 33:30Ryan Holiday?

  Yes. Although the irony is, Seneca doesn't appear in any of Marcus Aurelius's work, even though he obviously would have been familiar with them. And I always wondered if that was a bit of, what do we call it, subtweeting these days? If that was a very clear indictment of Marcus Aurelius's view of Seneca's role in Nero's time.

• 33:56Speaker 01

  Wow, I don't know that backstory and would love to learn more about it, but certainly they were learned enough to make those distinctions and it would be great to learn more.

• 34:07Ryan Holiday?

  Well, let's talk about the contradictions because I think this is another interesting tie in to the Stoics and to the founders. There's this fascinating passage, I think in Notes of the State of Virginia, where Jefferson is, for a guy who loves Terence and who loves Publius Cirrus and loves Epictetus, he's having to wrestle with the contradiction of then owning human beings. Like, he knows, you know, slaves, that these three men at least should not have been enslaved and were capable of great wisdom and input. And yet, he is perpetuating this, you know, profound injustice, which, from his own pen,

• 34:50Ryan Holiday?

  we know he sees it as that. How do you see the founders and these sort of ancient ideas either reinforcing or justifying the institution of slavery or helping them contradict it?

• 35:08Speaker 01

  Well, it's very striking to see that all of the enslavers from Virginia recognized that slavery violated natural rights and yet acknowledged in moments of candor that it was sheer avarice or greed that led them be unable to give it up. There's that incredible speech from Patrick Henry where after quoting Cato's letters, he says, "Isn't it amazing that he and his fellow Americans who are so fond of liberty also allow slavery?" And then he says, "It's avarice that made him choose not to follow his moral principles." "Would anyone believe that I am master of slaves of my own purchase?

• 35:52Speaker 01

  I'm drawn along by the general inconvenience of living without them. I cannot justify it." And it's so striking that Jefferson and the other enslavers also use that phrase, that classical phrase, avarice or greed. They knew that it was wrong, but they just liked the lifestyle and didn't want to give it up. So in that sense, they were at least rebuked by the inconvenience of betraying the classical principles. But it's really shocking to see Jefferson

• 36:22Speaker 01

  Turn to the classics to, for the first time, begin to justify open racism. And as you say, he notes that Terence and other great enslaved Roman poets were white. And then he uses that distinction to belittle the talents of Phyllis Wheatley, the great black poet, saying that her poetry couldn't be good because she's black. And then he ventures, as a suspicion only, he'd like to be proven wrong, that black people were inferior to white people. That conclusion was not one that the classics drew.

• 37:01Speaker 01

  Seneca, of course, questions slavery, so it was the beginning of the move toward scientific racism, which really took off in the early 19th century and adopted by people like John Calhoun and by scientific racists from Europe, begin to openly assert the intellectual inferiority of blacks, eventually leading Calhoun to break up with the Enlightenment ideals of the Declaration entirely and say the Declaration was wrong to assert that all men are created equal. So it's just a remarkable example of the fact that the founders betrayed their own principles.

• 37:43Speaker 01

  At their most candid moments, they recognized it, but it was all within this classical framework.

• 37:49Ryan Holiday?

  Although I guess we can't let the Stoics themselves off the hook. You're right, Seneca does question slavery, but, you know, he doesn't want to give up his estates. Marcus Aurelius, you know, loves Epictetus, then he's the emperor, he would probably have been in a position to do something about slavery, but he doesn't. The irony, I think, is there is a line in, I think it's Diogenes Laertus, where he refers to... Xeno as a swarthy, having a swarthy complexion, right? So what if the irony is, you know, he's this merchant in the Mediterranean? What if he had come from Carthage?

• 38:33Ryan Holiday?

  Or what if he had, what if, what if, what if the Stoic tradition itself was the fundamental rebuke of the racism that it ultimately, you know, helped, if not perpetuate, at least made room for the contradiction? It, it, there's something about Stoicism that, you know, treat, says that we're all equal, that we should respect people's rights, that, you know, injustice is wrong. And yet there is something about it, or at least in human nature, that allows us to say, all that is true, but I don't want to have to do my own, my own labor around, around the farm.

• 39:18Speaker 01

  That's, you put it very well. And that example of avarice, or greed, or the ability of humans to justify whatever they want to do anyway, was shared by both the Stoics and the founders. And the founders and the Stoics too, didn't follow their own philosophy when it was inconvenient. And maybe that's inherent in the human tradition.

• 39:42Ryan Holiday?

  Well, I think we got to give John Adams some real credit because in a sense, he's the true Stoic, right? He's the only one who lives within his means, who doesn't die in crippling debt, who doesn't fall in love with delicacies from France, or, or, or whatever, right? Other than books, his only, his basically, his only vice is buying every book he can get his hands on. But, but you know, the reason that Jefferson isn't able to free his slaves upon his death is because he can't afford to. You know, Washington is able to get there, but not in his lifetime. Whereas John Adams, the much more disciplined, much more, you know, much more in line with this Stoic virtue of temperance is, is not, does, you know, what's Lincoln's line about?

• 40:30Ryan Holiday?

  Uh, wringing your, your bread from another man's labor, sweat, sweat from another man's brow. John Adams is the only independent, uh, of the, the only one of the founders who's independent in that way. He's not, he is not built his lifestyle or his happiness on the direct exploitation of another race or group of human beings.

• 40:57Speaker 01

  Absolutely. It turns out that that Puritan virtue of frugality, which Adams practiced, allowed him, unlike most of the enslavers, to live within his means and therefore not to betray his principles. You see some of that in Franklin, who does change his mind on slavery and become an abolitionist. And, and among the enslavers, George With, Jefferson's law tutor, is the one, the only one who really lives his principles, frees his slaves during his lifetime and really denounces it. And then of course, it's the really avaricious enslavers who wildly live beyond their means, James Wilson and George, well, James Wilson

• 41:41Speaker 01

  in particular, who just can't pay his debts and is ruined as a result. And his views on slavery are accordingly affected.

• 41:52Ryan Holiday?

  So talk to me about happiness, because I think when people think of Stoicism, they don't think happy. They think the opposite, right? But, but this idea of the pursuit of happiness, which is obviously enshrined in the American promise, is that something they get from the Stoics or are they taking from other classical thinkers in that regard?

• 42:16Speaker 01

  The phrase, the pursuit of happiness is everywhere. It appears in all of the

• 42:23Speaker 01

  Major sources that the founders are drawing on for the Declaration, including the Christian sources, so-called reasonable Christians who are trying to reconcile faith and reason, the civic republican sources, the Whig sources, Blackstone. But what's significant is that all of the Enlightenment sources that use the phrase "the pursuit of happiness", all themselves cite back to the Stoics. And that's the really significant thing. The footnotes in each of these Enlightenment sources go back often to Cicero and to the ancients. And in that sense, I guess you can find in some of the translations of the classic sources, the phrase "the pursuit of happiness" or "pursuing happiness",

• 43:07Speaker 01

  Mrs. Carter's translations of Epictetus and the Seneca volumes that Washington read, will contain the phrase "the pursuit of happiness". But it's very important to recognize that the idea of "the pursuit of happiness", which is so central to the Enlightenment, is basically the Stoic wisdom of self-mastery and character improvement and tranquility of soul. And that's why it's significant that Adam Smith translates temperance as a tranquility of soul. And they're making the connection, which is inherent in Stoicism, between personal and political self-government.

• 43:47Ryan Holiday?

  So they're not meaning smiling all the time, happy, always having fun, happy. They mean it in... They have a slightly different definition of happiness, you could say?

• 44:00Speaker 01

  Absolutely. They have the opposite definition, the classical definition of happiness as being good, not feeling good, as the pursuit of virtue, not the pursuit of pleasure. But what's so significant is that that definition...

• 44:18Speaker 01

  Is one that they directly attribute to the Stoics and for them that is happiness. It's interesting that few of the major sources directly cite Aristotle's famous definition of happiness in the Nicomachean Ethics as an activity of the soul in conformity with excellence or virtue. And yet, all are channeling that idea, that happiness is a temperance or tranquility of soul in order to become perfect, to fulfill our potential, to use our talents to the best of our abilities, so we can be our best self and serve others, to use the modern context. And for them, there's no, that's what pursuing happiness is.

• 45:03Speaker 01

  It's a pursuit, it's not obtaining, it's a quest and a journey, not a destination. And it's all about the perfection of character, and they're getting that directly from the ancients.

• 45:14Ryan Holiday?

  What do you think they would think of what that's come to mean to us now? Like, when I think of the pursuit of happiness as how the ordinary American might define it now, or certainly a campaigning American politician, it seems to be, you know, the American dream is a material dream, right? It seems to be about pleasure, or it seems to be about license. It doesn't seem to be rooted in doing good for others, it doesn't seem to be rooted in purpose. And certainly, there doesn't seem to be much in the way of restraint, or self-imposed

• 45:55Ryan Holiday?

  restraint, in regards to the pursuit of happiness.

• 46:00Speaker 01

  There certainly doesn't. And it's fair to say that the ancients and the founders would be shocked by the modern definition, which is the opposite of their definition of happiness. Sometime in mid 20th century America, the 50s or the 60s, happiness came to meant to mean feeling good, not being good, pursuing immediate gratification rather than delayed gratification, giving way to your basest impulses of anger, jealousy, fear, rather than deliberating with yourself so that you could achieve temperance. And...

• 46:43Speaker 01

  All aspects of our pop culture and our technologies of communication and everything that we think about happiness is really the antithesis of the ancient wisdom. It's kind of remarkable that this core understanding of happiness, which was central to the founding, which was embraced by ancient and modern philosophers until so recently, has been completely thrown over and we've adopted the opposite definition.

• 47:14Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, I can only think of what their reaction would be if they heard, you know, a modern person speaking to a young person and going, "Look, the most important thing in life is that you find your passion. You gotta be passionate. You gotta find your passion." They'd be like, every red flag in the world would go off at the mention of the word "passion," which they, you know, was almost a synonym with evil to them. I mean, passion was the problem, not the solution, in the pursuit of happiness to the founders.

• 47:43Speaker 01

  Absolutely. Follow your passion without moderating it, or a leading happiness lecturer at one of the major universities just told their students, "How should you pursue happiness? Go get angry." It's literally the opposite. Now, of course, the founders in the ancients don't think we should lack passion, but just that we should moderate it so that we can temper our unreasonable and unproductive passions and emotions so that we can achieve the productive passions, moderation and temperance and prudence that allow us to focus our energies to achieve perfection for ourselves and others.

• 48:35Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, that was the interesting thing I've come to understand in my studies of Washington, and I think one of the famous sculptors of him pointed this out. He was saying that, you know, Washington had this reputation for his self-mastery, for his poise, his discipline, his temperance, but he said, "You could tell right below the surface that this was an incredibly passionate, intense, eager, almost easily angered man." But what he said, "Washington's first victory was over himself." And so this idea that, yes, it's great to have passions, it's great to have emotions. You just have to decide who's in charge, those things or you.

• 49:15Speaker 01

  Absolutely. He commanded himself, he controlled himself. That was the source of his greatness. He has an extremely fiery temper and Ron Chernow, his great biographer, speculates that it may have been from his reaction to his hypercritical mom, who's always criticizing him and he's struggling not to kind of lose it. But he succeeds. There are just a few occasions where he's seen to lose his temper in public and it's his magnificent self-command at moments of crisis, as at Newburgh or on the battlefield or as president, that is the very source of his greatness. The fact that we've lost the idea of self-command or self-control as the key to greatness is another sign of how far we've come.

• 50:01Ryan Holiday?

  Well, Washington is obviously ambitious, obviously enjoys power, obviously enjoys fame and all of these things that come along with his incredible success. And yet, his greatest act of self-mastery is how often he gives that power away, right? Which is based on his other ancient model, his twin heroes, Arcato and Cincinnatus. But I think when we talk to children about, you know, the norm he sets up of walking away from the presidency after two terms or resigning his commission, we don't quite frame it in the style of greatness

• 50:44Ryan Holiday?

  that it was seen as at the time. You know, the idea that you can have the power and the success and then not being defined by it, not needing it and being greater for giving it up.

• 50:58Speaker 01

  Exactly. Greatness as self-abnegation, self-control, self-mastery, self-command is the key to his greatness. It's really striking that the closer you look at Washington, the greater he appears. This is an age that's not, you know, very favorable to heroes and we love to tear down our icons, but the closer you look, the greater he appears. And that's precisely because of this virtue that we no longer celebrate, but which appears unquestionably great.

• 51:35Ryan Holiday?

  No, and I think the funny thing about Jefferson is the more you look at Jefferson, aside from the obvious things about slavery, but the deeper you look at Jefferson, the less you tend to respect him and the more you see that a lot of it was affect and not real virtue. And in Washington, yeah, there's certainly some of the contradictions and some of the hypocrisy and some of the unforgivable injustices. But when you see him as a man, you do, I think, relate to this guy who was really struggling and trying to be and do great things and be a good person fundamentally.

• 52:17Speaker 01

  Absolutely. There's a great scene in Henry Adams's novel Democracy where the protagonists are taking a boat trip down the Potomac and they stop in front of Mount Vernon and they're trying to figure out the meaning of Mount Vernon and it becomes a debate about the meaning of Washington. And was he a paper hero who was not intellectually deep or was he truly great? And they feel that the results of the debate will determine the meaning of America. And if Washington wasn't great, America isn't great, but the debate isn't resolved. And I think seen from our lens, it is resolved on behalf of Washington's greatness, and that's precisely because of his stoicism.

• 52:57Ryan Holiday?

  The irony for me going back, the more I read about Cicero, the less I like him. And the more I read about Cato or Marcus Aurelius or even Seneca, the more I like them. There is something, I don't want to say if it's fundamentally false or phony about the two of them, or it's, they were so steeped in the great ideas, but in the big moments of their life, when they were forced to choose the famous, you know, choice of Hercules, the hard way or the easy way, they tended to make the wrong call. They made the selfish call or the call they thought they could get away with, or the egotistical call, or something that I just, the more I study Cicero, the less I like him.

• 53:44Speaker 01

  So interesting. I have to share that I have on my wall right behind me the famous print of the choice of Hercules, that Adams would have dreams and nightmares about and that he wanted to make the great seal of the United States.

• 53:58Ryan Holiday?

  Yes.

• 53:58Speaker 01

  And that is the test. You know, what do you do, given the choice? And as you say, Cicero often failed.

• 54:06Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, you want to talk about a story that that would be so great to teach young people. That story is incredible. And yeah, for people don't know, the seal of the United States of the eagle, it's a wonderful seal, but Adams proposed that it be the choice of Hercules, choosing between virtue and vice, hard work, you know, laziness, whatever you want to define. That's sort of fundamental choice we make in life. Adams thought that that was the story or the promise of America, the opportunity of America was the chance for us to make that choice as individuals.

• 54:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, absolutely. I love the way he describes it. And he says that, "I propose the choice of Hercules with virtue pointing to her rugged mountain on the one hand, sloth glancing at her flowery paths of pleasure, wantonly reclining on the ground, displaying the charms both of her eloquence in person to seduce him into vice." And then he concludes, "This is too complicated a group for a seal or a medal, and it's not original." So he wisely abandons the choice. But it's, it helps concretely stress that there are crucial moments in life where we have to choose, and that will determine our character.

• 55:19Ryan Holiday?

  So I'm sure, I'm sure you know this, but maybe not all the listeners do. It's that story that Zeno hears when he washes up in Athens, having lost everything, he walks into a bookstore, and he hears a bookseller reading that story, which, which comes to us from Zenith, which is also in Jefferson's List. That's where Zeno hears the choice of Hercules. And, and that is the founding story of Stoicism, then, is this, this choice of Hercules, the choice between the virtues of courage and self-discipline and justice and wisdom, and the opposite of all those things. And I think about that story a lot because I'm doing now this series on the cardinal virtues. I've done courage and discipline,

• 56:03Ryan Holiday?

  and the justice book comes out this summer, and then I'm starting wisdom now. But I open each of the four books with, with that story, because I think it is such a, it's- It's the origin story for greatness, for Stoicism, but I think also America itself. Like, none of these founders had to do any of the things that they did, and it would have been easier for them not to. But we make this choice, and when we make this choice, it can set us up to do not easy things, but great things.

• 56:34Speaker 01

  That's amazing. I did not know that that was the origin story for Xeno, and it makes it all the more meaningful that this print is on my wall, and it's so important to inspire listeners to think about that choice that we all face every day and to try to make the right one.

• 56:52Ryan Holiday?

  So if we think about Cicero and Plutarch and all these ancient figures being the models for the founders, what do you think they would have thought? Because they make reference to it quite a bit. They're worried about Catalines, or Catalines of their time, right? And again, the idea, the only thing that's new is the history you do not know. I feel like we have a moment where, you know, now, where we face a sort of version of our own Cataline conspiracy, our own sort of threat to these institutions, or certainly someone who embodies, in most ways, the opposite of these classical virtues, however, you

• 57:35Ryan Holiday?

  know, popular they are as a politician. How do you think the founders would think about that?

• 57:41Speaker 01

  Well, it's very striking how directly the founders' main concern was demagogues, and based on their studies of Greece and Rome, they feared a Caesar or a Catalin who would come and destroy the Republic. And there are two quotations in particular from Hamilton and Jefferson that are really striking, and Hamilton is...

• 58:08Speaker 01

  Worried that the only path to the subversion of the republican system of the country is by flattering the prejudices of the people, exciting their jealousies and apprehensions to throw affairs into confusion and to bring on civil commotion, he writes to George Washington in ninety-two, and here's the quote, "When a man unprincipled in private life, desperate in his fortune, bold in his temper, is seen to mount the hobby horse of popularity, it may justly be suspected that his object is to throw things into confusion, that he may ride the storm and direct the whirlwind." And Hamilton's immediate fear in invoking the example of Caesar is Burr. He thinks that our modern Catalina is Burr. Jefferson, who agrees with Hamilton about little, except for the danger of populist demagogues, I

• 58:53Speaker 01

  found this amazing letter that he writes to Madison after he gets the Constitution, and he's afraid that an unscrupulous candidate in the distant future might lose an election and refuse to leave office. And he says, "If once elected at a second or third election, outvoted by one or two votes, he will pretend false votes, foul play, hold possession of the reins of government, and be supported by the states voting for him." So both Hamilton and Jefferson, Federalists and Republicans, are concerned about populist demagogues, Caesars and Catalins. They designed the entire system to avoid demagogues by slowing down deliberation and preventing mobs and populist passions from forming. And it's fair to

• 59:37Speaker 01

  say, without any partisanship whatsoever, that January sixth would be the founders' nightmare.

• 59:42Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, it's terrifying to read Cicero's account of that conspiracy, which is a bit aggrandizing and a bit self-serving. And when you see a false populist who cannot face their own rejection by the system or by the voters, proceeds to try to overthrow that system. And yeah, I think when Truman is saying, "I read Plutarch, and it helps me with my problems," he was saying that all those personality types, all those people

• 1:00:24Ryan Holiday?

  that are attracted to politics, or business, or power, or fame. You know, there's nothing new about that. There's nothing new under the sun, right? This is in the Bible. And, and, and the vigilance required to combat those things remains, you know, an ever-present reality for us today.

• 1:00:43Speaker 01

  Absolutely. That's why we've got to study history, the vigilance required to defend liberty. George Washington in saying that the republic will fall unless we can find the virtue of self-education says that we need to study the science of government, first to learn the principles of liberty so we can defend them, and second, to learn the habits of deliberation and compromise and willingness to engage with people from different parts of the country who'll set aside their parochial passions to serve the common good. And they're just not sure that the experiment will survive. And at the end of their lives,

• 1:01:22Speaker 01

  most of the founders are despairing, if not concerned about the possibility that this republic will fall, just as all other republics have fallen. They have different views about all that, but everything turns, in their view, on our ability to find the virtuous self-mastery that only the study of history can impart.

• 1:01:44Ryan Holiday?

  So when you go back to the Stoics, when you read these ideas, when you think about these things, where does that leave you with where we are today? I, I sort of feel like I alternate between becoming deeply inspired when I read about these classical ideas and, and also deeply depressed or, or alarmed because it feels like we're so far from them. Do you know what I mean? I, I, I mean, I have been in the Senate dining room talking to Republican politicians about these Stoic ideas, which they are well on board with.

• 1:02:26Ryan Holiday?

  I love the idea that the trend, and Democratic politicians do, but I love the idea that the tradition is alive. And yet, it seems to be...

• 1:02:36Ryan Holiday?

  Maybe in that other Stoic tradition, we're talking about a reticence to actually make the tough decisions demanded by an adherence or a belief in virtue.

• 1:02:50Speaker 01

  Well, these are extraordinarily challenging times, and there are so many aspects of our modern political culture and technology that are the antithesis of the sober reflection and virtuous self mastery that the Stoics counseled. And to the degree that social media and polarization reward enraged to engage in playing to your base and the most extreme voices in our polarized culture, rather than the self mastered and moderate ones, then there's a serious challenge to republican institutions. And of course, we don't know what will, what the future will bring and elections and wars can turn on a few votes

• 1:03:30Speaker 01

  or on chance or on fate. So as for the future, we'll, we'll see. But it is inspiring to see how deeply people from around the country are resonating to these ancient ideas. And the listeners for your podcast are the most tangible example of that. And it's wonderful that so many people are turning to this ancient wisdom to master themselves. And as for me, I'm inspired by the possibilities for deep reading and self improvement. And it just blows my mind that all of these ancient texts are now free and online. And although people struggled for access to books throughout most of human history, now all we need is the self discipline to read them, to seek them out and to set aside our devices and

• 1:04:14Speaker 01

  to turn off the distractions and actually to lose ourselves in the ancient wisdom. Whether it's a silent majority or a movement of people who are committed to the Republic of Reason remains to be seen. But it's very inspiring that everyone who's listening to the show is part of this community of lifelong learners.

• 1:04:34Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, I think it's probably worth pointing out, there are more Stoics now than ever before in history, perhaps ever cumulatively in history. If you added up every single one from, you know, ancient Greece through the founding to today, how many could it have been? How many, how many people who were truly interested in and trying to apply Stoicism, could there have been hundreds of thousands, maybe? You know, the numbers today are probably in our favor, if, if anything.

• 1:05:04Speaker 01

  That's a really important point. And of course, this kind of self-education has never been attempted before on a mass scale. And the founders think that everything will turn on how broadly the wisdom of reason can be diffused. And Jefferson is optimistic that through education, people can be inspired to engage in the daily work of self-perfection. You know, Adams, who's more skeptical about human nature and much more skeptical about democracy, is less optimistic. But in all the noise and polarization of the extremes, we shouldn't forget the fact that larger numbers, as you say, are committed to this path than ever before.

• 1:05:48Ryan Holiday?

  And I try to remind myself, you know, it was no golden age then, you know, Socrates lived in the time of the thirty tyrants, and then he's put to death by, you know, the democracy there. Cato lived to see the fall of the Robid Republic, right? Seneca has to work, has to show up every day in Nero's Court, you know. Marcus Aurelius is watching the decline and fall of the empire. It wasn't always great. And in fact, you could argue that's the whole point of Stoicism, is it's a philosophy designed to make you great, even when the circumstances are not great. And so, yeah, whatever happens in the election,

• 1:06:30Ryan Holiday?

  however bad or dark things get, Stoicism is not saying you throw up your hands and you just let it happen, but it's saying, no, what matters is how you respond to these things that happen, that are outside of your control. And there's parts of this that are in our control, but then, you know, we don't control the time we're born, the things that happen, the events of our lifetimes. And we do control who we are inside them, though.

• 1:06:59Speaker 01

  Exactly. Just as Stoicism was so empowering during the challenges of the pandemic, so it is incredibly empowering during these politically fraught times. And we can control the effects of the election, or war, or the fate of democracy, but each of us can control the amount of time that we devote to Mastering and perfecting ourselves. And it's just a radically empowering message to rediscover the virtues of deep reading and reflection. And that's something that no one can take away from us. And in fact, the more challenging the world grows around us, we, like

• 1:07:44Speaker 01

  the ancient Stoics who preceded us, can discover all the more the incredibly empowering virtues of deep reading.

• 1:07:55Ryan Holiday?

  Well, Jeffrey, I love the book. I think it's super important. And anyone that is bringing Stoicism to people is I'm a fan of. So thank you very, very much.

• 1:08:03Speaker 01

  Thank you so much. Love the conversation and thanks for all you're doing to inspire people to read these wonderful sources.

• 1:08:16Ryan Holiday?

  Thanks so much for listening. If you could rate this podcast and leave a review on iTunes, that would mean so much to us and would really help the show. We appreciate it and I'll see you next episode.